France's Macron: vaccine patents not the issue, it's getting jabs out

(Reuters) - The question of whether there should be a waiver on COVID-19 vaccines is not the most critical issue right now, it is getting doses distributed across the world, French President Emmanuel Macron said on Friday.

"What is the current issue? It is not really about intellectual property. Can you give intellectual property to laboratories that do not know how to produce and will not produce tomorrow?" he told reporters on arrival for a European Union summit in the Portuguese city of Porto.

"The main issue for solidarity is the distribution of doses."

(Reporting by John Chalmers, editing by Marine Strauss)